Charles Elwood Yeager sources

Charles Elwood Yeager Biography:

Aviator and test pilot Chuck Yeager was born on February 13, 1923, in Myra, West Virginia. A fighter pilot ace during the Second World War, he became the first person to break the sound barrier, when he flew the Bell X-1 rocket 670 miles per hour in level flight in October 1947.

He graduated in the Flight Performance School in 1946 as well as the following year was selected to test pilot the Bell X-1 rocket. After naming the jet “Glamorous Glennis” after his own wife, Yeager reached a top rate of 670 miles per hour on October 14, becoming the first person to break the sound barrier.

Within another couple of years, Yeager as well as the X 1 made more than 40 flights collectively, during which he repeatedly broke the speed of sound, reaching rates of 960 miles per hour and altitudes of 70,000 feet.

During WWII, Yeager was a P51 fighter pilot. He was shot down over France, evaded capture and escaped to Spain. He may have gone home, however he put in a request to go back to battle, a request that went all the way up to General Eisenhower. The request given, Yeager went back into action, as well as in one day he was credited with downing five German airplanes. Following the war, Yeager became the very first American to fly a Russian MIG, one that has been taken into detention in South Korea by a North Korean defector.

Yeager eventually reached a rate of 1,650 miles per hour and an elevation of over 90,000 feet, efforts that helped earn him the Distinguished Service Medal.

Yeager’s autobiography, Press On, was released in 1985, the exact same year he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. On October 14, 1997, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Yeager breaking the sound barrier, the 74-year old aviator headed to the heavens once more and broke the sound barrier yet again. He appears as the principal character in Tom Wolfe’s novel The Right Stuff, and his mythical status led him to many commercial sanctions.